It’s happening, the Twitch purge has begun. Streamers everywhere are in fear of the horrors of the fallout of the YouTube purchase, as Twitch is now muting 30 minute blocks of unauthorized audio content. First they come for the 30 minute time blocks, then they come for the 5 minute time blocks, then they come for whatever just make something up. At which point do you speak up?

Never? Right now? When? The comical thing for me is that people are violating the law by streaming audio that they don’t own to other audiences. Which is fine - a lot of laws are broken and are only relevant when someone makes it relevant. You don’t see a lot of people snagging tickets for jaywalking, but it’s against the law, and you’re technically a criminal the second you do it.

Yet, the community has just freshly sharpened their pitchforks and they’re all up in arms over this Google takeover of their audio/video communications. They’re walking over to Twitch, their fedoras equipped to their head slot, the fresh aroma of the borrowed Old Spice wafting through the air, and they’re going, “I know it’s against the law, sir, for me to stream someone else’s intellectual property, but it’s an affront to my audience for them not to clothe themselves in non-stop dubstep as I orderly pwn the newbs, good sir.”

Not to say that each and every member of the streaming corp is fedora wearing neckbeards with a terrible taste in cologne, but I sort of just said that the ones who whine about their inability to use copyrighted music might be edging in that direction as they assault our ears with terrible dubstep and trap music that they don’t own nor have the rights to?

Here’s the thing, there are laws in this country and we as citizens should try to uphold them. Some laws we don’t agree with and some laws make things, not fun and some of them are very broad laws in order to include as many renditions of burning MP3s to a CD and selling them out of a cardboard box by the roadside, next to the T.V. hooked to a generator that’s playing a burned copy of Resident Evil and a few folding chairs, only $2.00 to sit and watch.

Yeah, this Google buyout is going to ruin the fun for people, probably, who knows. I doubt Google is going to walk in and take away all the income of something they just bought because they’re the party police and they’re here to stop you from doing yet another Tim Allen’s Tool Time SNES stream. That’s just plain stupid. It’s just so strange that so many people work for companies, and these companies goals are to make money. So we all know in our hearts of hearts that companies goals are to make money.

Of course, halfway through writing this Twitch announces that they’re only going to do it to the video on demand, so they’re not basically going to host copyrighted material above and beyond ringtones, someone walking in with a boombox, whatever.

Well the end of the Internet as we know it is here once more as something got too big for its breeches, it’s not gonna be fun anymore, and we should all just quit and go outside and read a book or something since the Internet has failed us. Pshaw. This is dumb, it’s like headline news on every gaming site. I think I might be the only person who doesn’t care and who does respect maybe people shouldn’t perform to music they don’t own.

Let’s show Twitch, you know, let’s show them. Let’s all just start playing terrible copyrighted music and streaming it 24/7 to protest! Yeah! Whatever, this is dumb. So dumb. I don’t even want to write about it or come up with more stupid things to say. Maybe I’m just old and am not the sensationalist that all these young kids are. I’m in my twenties and I feel old. Let’s talk about that.

Being old sucks. You see people online go and complain about something that’s so minor, so dumb, it’s just whatever. I don’t even like streamers playing music. It’s not entertaining. I have my own music. I can listen to that. They need to talk and entertain, that’s what the best streamers do, and if they’re not going to do that then they should use the in-game music and turn it down really low so I can hear the sound of ya know, the game.

I’m going to go grab my cane and run on down to the grocery store, where I’ll put on my fedora and walk over to customer service and be like, “Good sir, this music has been playing for more than 30 minutes! Show me proof of your authority to play this music! They’ve taken music from our videos on demand, so I will take music from this grocery store!”

If you’re this far in you deserve something a bit more serious - when I was at the streamers convention here in Atlanta, one of the big themes was “what’s the future.” There is a big, big, much bigger issue of games claiming that footage of their game is intellectual property and to use it to stream or on video sites requires their permission. This - this is what people need to care about. Their ability to stream games. Not if they can play some sweet Avril Lavigne on their stream.

Respawn is the personal opinion of David “Xerin” Piner and in no way reflects the opinions or views of Ten Ton Hammer or the associated staff.

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.